


I can put up one good fight // I can put on a show

by charleybradburies



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Childhood Memories, Cousin Incest, Dadvos (TM), F/M, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Family Feels, Family Reunions, Half-Sibling Incest, House Stark, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lies, Memories, Not Canon Compliant, Not Really Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Stark kid ships to come, POV Bran, Protective Siblings, Rating May Change, Reunions, Running Away, Season/Series 06, Secret Identity, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, What-If, divergence from the canon timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-12 01:00:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13536318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: A series of choices leads a family down some unexpected roads.Different roads may yet lead to the same castle.title from Halsey's "Heaven in Hiding." all chapter titles are Halsey lyrics.Some tags in anticipation of later events.(Will include other POVs and eventual Arya/Gendry and Bran/Meera)Please comment!!





	1. what happened to the soul that you used to be?

“I’ll sail from Eastwatch,” Jon declares again, this time sharply enough that Edd only purses his lips in response. Few of the living were keen to see him go, and yet, he could no longer stay. 

“To where?” Davos is sure to ask, and Jon shrugs.

“South. As long as it’s not King’s Landing, I don’t much care where.” 

“And when Bolton writes, my lord?” Melisandre feels some need to chime in. She remains somber after Stannis’ loss, but regardless of his very literal life, he’s as frustrated by her as before. “If all we know is true, he still has your sister.”

“And what do we _know,_ Lady Melisandre? That the Night’s Watch is sworn not to intervene in the disputes of the realm? That Edd’s forces boast not a hundred men? That half the North has accepted his tyranny? What can I do for her, for anyone? Charge down there and murder him myself? I would if I could, but nothing your God shows makes it possible.”

__

__

She’s taken aback by his anger, but she knows what’s she’s done. 

“Considering what He’s done for you recently, I would call Him yours, too.”

“Yes, _you_ would,” Jon scoffs, trying to gather himself. “Please excuse yourself, my lady.”

She smiles grimly and gives something of a curtsy, and does as he’s bid. Jon leans over the table with his head in his hands, and the room is silent for a time. 

“She’s right. This is selfish of me. I’ve been released from my vows; I _should_ be riding for Winterfell.”

“With what army?” Davos counters. 

“You’re correct, here. Bolton’s not letting you anywhere near Winterfell, not with Karstark and Umber and whoever else on his side. Even if you rallied the wildings nearest the Wall, that’s nowhere near enough people. Even in a Northern army, even the houses whose loyalties on which the Night’s Watch hasn’t been informed, that’s not enough men to beat someone who beat down Stannis. Tyrion Lannister and Ramsay Bolton have both done it, and I can tell you it won’t work to your benefit to try, let alone to your sister’s.”

Jon looks up at him again, unsure what to say. Part of him would protest - he _should_ be willing to die trying to save her - and part of him, perhaps the still dead part, wants to say it’s just as well, that he’ll go south with a false name and pretend he never even _was_ Jon Snow. 

Logically, he knows that Sansa’s no longer the girl he once knew, but if she’s anything like her, she probably won’t mourn him terribly, anyway, when she hears what’s transpired here. 

The horn blows, then comes the call for riders. A few seconds later, any response Jon could have mustered is cut off with an uncertain knock. 

“Yes?” Edd asks a moment later, beginning to adjust to being the one people answered to at Castle Black.

“My lords, you should come to the yard,” comes Melisandre’s voice, unsure as her knock and yet clearer than day, and again all eyes are on Jon. He stifles a groan and nods. By the time Davos has opened the door and walked out ahead of Jon, she’s no longer by the door, but has joined the men in curiously watching some visitors arrive in the middle of the yard. A tall, but seemingly not ungainly, armored blonde, a young man, and - 

And his heart quite possibly stopped another time. Between them, even before the woman met his eyes, he saw Sansa.

Although, in a way, even at first glance, she wasn’t. Her hair was unkempt and her clothes were plain, and once his body somehow decided it would get itself down the stairs to walk closer, he could see the dirt on her face and a sort of smile that she hadn’t saved for him since she’d understood what the word _bastard_ meant. Then, before he even knew it, she’d rushed forward and into his arms, leaning into him and holding him so tight he momentarily wondered if she intended to ever let go. But as he wrapped his arms around her and found that she grasped him even closer, he could not mind. The hug was something he hadn't known in a long time; it was full of warmth and need, and while he was more fond of the smell of fire that lingered in her hair than the scent of roses hidden beneath that they both gave him a sense of comfort. 

It was a shuffling behind her that caused her to pull away eventually, smiling as though she’d forgotten what it had felt like; the yard had halted nearly all action while they’d embraced, and one of her companions’ horses had gotten restless. Some of his - some of _Edd’s_ \- men come forward to offer to stable the three mounts, and no sooner are the horses gone than Ghost has barrelled over to his family. He’s rather large, but almost on instinct, Sansa drops to her knees to greet him, and by some miracle, he willingly accepts being petted and coddled like a pup; she even gives him a few loving kisses before standing up and clearing her throat and very distinctly becoming Lady Sansa again.

Ghost takes a seat by her feet, and Jon isn’t sure whether he thinks he’s protecting her or waiting for further affection.

“I’m sorry! I’d never intended to be so impolite,” Sansa says, redder than she’d been just a moment before. She turns suddenly to her companions, and they come up to join her and Jon, eager in manner although the young man is visibly discomfited by Ghost’s presence. 

“Jon, this is my sworn sword, Brienne, and her squire, Podrick. Brienne, Podrick, this is my brother, Jon.”

Somehow he manages a proper greeting for them, but her words stick in his mind stronger than anything. 

**My _brother_ , Jon.**


	2. the truth hurts, but secrets kill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited after posting because I realize the extent of my non-canon timeline left a plot hole as large as the Narrow Sea.

After nearly a fortnight of deliberation - days of learning each other more than relearning, of harrowing stories and shock and anger and grief, of declarations and decisions that Jon never imagined either of them would make - House Stark is declared dead. Edd pens the letter to the Citadel himself, with varying amounts of assistance from participants in the great story. 

Lord Commander Jon Snow made an educated but controversial decision, and his men turned on him. His successor wore his friend’s black cloak as he hung the murderers and freed Ghost into the far North. 

The pyre burned bright, and the eighty-odd men left at Castle Black grieve what he could have done, and now, his watch is ended.

Lady Sansa Bolton arrived the day after her bastard brother’s pyre. She thanked his successor for his service and Stannis’ hand for the siege attempt, and withdrew into an empty room. 

She went atop the wall for fresh air the next night, cheeks stained with tears, and as dawn fell, she threw herself over, never to be found. 

Brienne of Tarth continues to take to heart her vow to Sansa’s mother Catelyn, and she and her squire remain at Castle Black to account for the possibility that Brandon, Rickon, or even Arya Stark, may be heard from again. 

Brandon Stark, apprentice of the Three-Eyed Raven, heir of his late family, stays in his sequestered cave with his companions, and watches.

He watches as Theon Greyjoy, the man who took Winterfell in betrayal and yet could not find it inside himself to kill his once-brothers, makes his way back to the home that’s never been his home. 

He watches as Ramsay Bolton receives a letter of condolence from the Night’s Watch and breaks a table in fury. 

He watches as Daenerys Targaryen’s forces rule in Meereen and Dragon's Bay, as flags emblazoned with the three-headed dragon of her house fly for the first time in almost twenty years.

He watches as a girl without a name weathers the strike of the rod in her pursuit of the murder of a kingsguard whose viciousness she recalls from a life she prefers to think she no longer lives. 

He watches as Davos Seaworth, a man who has worn many titles, a knight old but not yet weary, escorts his son Steffon, and his new daughter-by-law Alayne, a refugee of House Bolton’s war-torn North, to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and as they procure two cabins of a trade ship to the Stormlands.

Bran watches everyone he can think of, every place he can imagine. Bran watches the world as it burns, and he waits.


	3. searching for something that I can't reach

The first stretch of the trip is the hardest for Sansa.

She logically knows there’s no way for Ramsay to find her, but as they sail slowly down the coast and she sees banners of houses that have declared for him, houses who had fought behind Robb and then had turned on her, she retreats below deck to the room she shares with Jon to keep from being seized with fear. 

Somewhere, upon that land, Ramsay and Baelish and Cersei and Walder Frey all sat in their castles and ruled. She was better off not to look at it; the coast of the Stormlands would be prettier, anyways, but neither that thought nor her sewing keeps her from pondering Westeros’s current climate. Widow’s Watch was no spectacular sight, but it’s a reminder that even as she runs, Ramsay has won. Longbow Hall, the seat of a vassal of Sansa’s cousin Robin - at least, for now - is easier on the mind, but the coast of the Vale is no more beautiful. She looks forward to Dragonstone and Evenfall Hall.

Baelish, at least, would be hurt by her absence; she and Alayne were both happy to think of it. And perhaps the North will never again know a Stark in Winterfell, but Sansa, as incapable of vengeance as she has been, knows the expense of trying to take her home back. Bran and Rickon had fled, but she had been a prisoner in her own home, and it’s no more a home to her than Castle Black. 

Yet, even in her worse moments, Alayne enjoyed this voyage much more than her last. Steffon was not so pleased, but it seemed most circumstances might find him hard to please. He was not rough, not when his labor on the ship was only manual and not violent, but his smiles were only for his wife and father. Davos, for his part, was more cheerful, clearly glad to be back on board a ship. He’d spent so long serving Stannis that he’d not seen his own keep in ages, and he was happy to be headed for it.

Jon, though, was not so good at becoming Steffon as Sansa was at being Alayne; even so, he did manage to make a good husband. The matter was more difficult for Sansa than for Alayne, as most of the evidence was in private. It was harder to pretend they were not children of House Stark when he behaved as their father would have taught him - complimenting her skills at mending clothes, or ensuring she was not hungry before he finished his own rations. The first night they’d shared a room she had asked him to look away as she changed her dresses, and he’d met the request without comment ever since, and he stayed to the other side of the bed at night, holding her only when she had a nightmare. Yet, such gestures, as kind as they were, made it hard to recall that she was his sister in truth. 

One night, Jon lays back in the bed and actually watches her take her hair out of its braids, perhaps perplexed by its current deep black color, and she silently remembers seeing her father run his fingers through her mother’s hair when they sat together, unbothered by their children or their duties. Sansa tries to ignore that her heart flutters at the thought, but realizes that it’s the first time she’s thought of her parents’ love with a feeling other than pain, and she can’t forget about it. 

“Stone by stone,” Catelyn had told her daughters. She and Ned hadn’t loved each other when they’d married, they’d barely known each other, but slowly and surely they’d built a family, a home, a love that any sane person would envy. Sansa hadn’t wanted to build that with Tyrion, even with his kindnesses, and she’s sacrificed the possibility; but below the Sansa that Petyr had taken and Ramsay had wed lies Alayne, once a bastard girl from the Vale and now a former lady’s maid, a simple woman who still hopes for such a thing. 

Alayne, though, had Steffon, while Sansa would never take another husband. Even worse, Jon, who had only just been freed from his vow to never take a wife, had agreed so easily to being bound to her; he would never take a wife, let alone let Steffon have a mistress. Even without a particularly noble name, it would bring shame onto his wife, and Jon would never put that upon her. But all that had needed to be said was that it would be safest for her if he traveled as her husband, and he’d not spent a moment longer thinking about the choice. 

“Will you wash out the black before we continue to Essos?” he asks suddenly, pulling her back into consciousness. His voice is soft, like the dim light of the candle in their cabin. It takes her a moment to reply.

“I suppose I will. It would take a great deal of upkeep to maintain the black. Once it’s public knowledge that Sansa Stark is dead, it won’t be as important to stay hidden.”

“I’ll be happy to see it. I think I much prefer the red.”

She grabs the comb from the small table and pulls it through the ends of her hair. 

“Lord Baelish used to remind me that I look a great deal like my mother.” 

“Her eyes were never quite so kind,” Jon says, and she hears him turn around in bed, as though he’s answered the question he clearly knows she meant to ask. By the time she’s finished with her hair and moved to get into bed, he’s fallen asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I know I have a million other things to write, but I've promised to write something every month this year and this is the one thing I found myself able to put into words.
> 
> Please subscribe, kudos and comment and share your thoughts!


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